I Understand my Tests are Popular Reading in the Teachers' Lounge

Wow, haven't blogged for a while. Guess you all know what that means! Yep... I got work to do! Granted, it's just soldering/desoldering but work's work.

Soo, last weekend, Friday night was a welcoming party for the new person in my section, we had hotpot, it was pretty good. My coworkers were surprised when I told them it was -30 back in Calgary last week, and that smokes were 10 bucks a pack back home.

Saturday meant waking up quite early. I was meeting Keith (and very eventually Tongxin) at Yodobashi Camera to study for our big JLPT test. Breakfast, studying, camera buying, and lunch, and then Tongxin showed up around 2-2:30. Just as reference, we were all going to meet at 9:30am. Poor late Tongxin.

We travelled down to the Intex Osaka convention centre, on the west side of the city (where the Coldplay concert was), to see a robot exhibition. Some very cool things in here, including a spider bot which can scurry around, pick things up and put them on its head. Fighting robots, gymnastic robots that can do somersaults, boxing robots, biking robots, robots that look almost human. We got there late and only had an hour to see everything, but managed to see the important stuff.

After the expo, back to studying! By this time the Beatles were driving me nuts, Yodobashi Camera had the same CD playing all day long, which meant I heard Hey Jude 42 times, which is excessive even for Hey Jude. It turns out that level 3 JLPT is very hard, I did not do well on the practice tests at all, so I had low confidence for the next day.

So Sunday was the JLPT, I won't say much about it cept I'd be surprised if I even got one question right. Tongxin had an interesting test writing experience I hear. Later I went downtown and bought two books (Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and Bradbury's Classic Stories I (Which has A Sound of Thunder in it, woot!)).

I also bought a guitar. I can't play guitar. I know nothing about guitars. And I have no coordination. But what better time to learn! I ordered a lesson book and a book of music (Coldplay's Parachutes, has some excellent acoustic songs), should arrive this week or early next.

Anyway, after the test, Keith had to pick up Tongxin before heading to downtown Kyoto, so I dropped off my newfangled purchases back home then headed back downtown to meet them.

Where were we going? Kiyomizu Temple Lightup! It's where the take the temple... and they light it up! Anyway, it was pretty, but as I had been to the temple before, it wasn't much different. But still good to see I suppose. Pictures will be up on my webalbum soon.

Gym on monday. Went to see Casino Royale Tuesday night. Not a bad movie, started out good, but went downhill after the... well, during the torture scene. /shudders.

Yesterday Kelvin came down to Kansai on business, so we went out for dinner at Shin-Osaka. I was late because my Sub-Express train turned into a local train without my knowledge. We went to an Indian restaurant and had Indian beer, and then I missed shower curfew. Was good though.

I stayed up too late last night to finish my book, Curious Incident... It's about a 15 year old kid with Asperger's (similar to high functioning autism) who tries to solve the murder of his neighbour's dog. Very well written and interesting story. It's written as a fictional autobiography, so you read it in first person from the boy's point of view. I liked it, though I think maybe the author got a little too carried away with the plot, it's a little far fetched. Now onto more Bradbury.

Tomorrow, as Sir Jason of France so kindly reminded me, is Friday, ie Kyoto Accordion Day, hurray! And then I'm off on the night bus for Hiroshima, with Keith, Kelvin, and a few of Keith's coworkers.

What else? Hmm... people in Calgary, stay safe. Three people my age have died in Calgary this winter. A guy that I've known since Grade 7 was killed in a car accident last month. This morning I found out that two brothers from Calgary, one of which was in all of my engineering classes at school, died from CO poisoning from a faulty propane heater while out in the mountains. Very scary.

Until next week...